Gottfried: "We Are Going To Compete"

NC State head coach Mark Gottfried fielded questions from the media on his weekly teleconference.

Opening Statement:
It's a big week for
us. Our players are excited about the opportunity
that's ahead of us, and I'm sure they are anxious to
play this week.

When you say opportunity, I'm
assuming you're talking about these next three
games, Duke, Florida State and North Carolina,
just a chance really to cement yourself as an
NCAA Tournament team?
I'm not talking about
three games. I'm talking about one game. That's
all we're worried about. And you know, I think
what's -- I think a mistake that people make is that
grouping these three together. We have got six
very, very difficult conference teams left, not three,
six. And we have one very difficult game Thursday
and that's where our attention is. It's not anywhere
past one game.

You do feel like you still have to do
some work to get into the tournament, right?
That's what I mean by the opportunity.
Without question, we
are not. We have a long way to go. And so, like I
said, at minimum, seven games left.
So we have a lot of work to do, a lot of
games to be played. But our attention is not on
anything other than Thursday's game.

When a player who like Miles
Plumlee has been a role player for Duke comes
up with something like 22 rebounds in a game,
does that gather extra attention from you, or
does that make you say, hey, we need to
account for this guy, maybe more than you
did? How does that affect the way you prepare
for them?
Well, I think that he's
been a very good rebounder. He had a great
rebounding day, and we will definitely -- you know,
he's a focus about, as we prepare in regard to how
they rebound the ball, but we have to be a better
rebounding team no matter who we are playing
against. That has not been a strength of ours
recently. So we have to be much better. But his
performance was spectacular.

Last week the McDonald's
All-American team was announced and you
guys had three guys on it. Over the last few
decades, it's been North Carolina and Duke
getting all these guys, I know they don't all pan
out, but ratings are fairly accurate. Wondering
what it says to your program that you did make
that mark. I know you are still recruiting at
least one more guy that might make it. How do
you read that?
Well, you know, we
have got great opportunity here for young players.
It's a new coaching staff. There's so much to sell
here at NC State. The fact that they came tells me
they want to be a part of something really unique,
and that's trying to build a basketball program back
up. I don't know if it says anything bigger than
that.

We could have had one of those or two of
those guys maybe not make that game and we
would still be extremely proud of the guys we got,
and excited about them coming, whether they are
in that game or not. I think the fact that they are in
that game brings more attention obviously to the
group. We are excited about them.

I just wonder, your game Thursday
night is your first meeting with Duke. But you
clashed with them on the recruiting trail a
couple of times, and I know you won at least
one battle with them and I think you're still
battling for a guy. In terms of recruiting --
obviously recruiting in long term affects long
court...
I don't know, are you
saying that the winner, the outcome of the game
determines recruiting? Not necessarily.

I mean,
we have a long way to go here. When I took the
job back in April, I was told repeatedly, quite
frankly, how mediocre we have been. So that was
drilled into me, and at the same time, we have big
dreams and we have big goals.

And so we are going to compete hard on
the floor. We are going to compete hard in
recruiting. We are going to compete. And
hopefully we can keep improving.

I guess the idea I'm trying to get
across is that idea of, oh, State can't compete
with the Dukes and North Carolinas. Obviously
with the recruiting rankings and everything, suddenly we are not used to anybody other
than North Carolina and Duke getting three
McDonald's All-Americans in the class. I was
trying to get around the idea that this was a
statement that, A, you are going to compete for
those guys.
I don't know that it's
a statement. I don't want to make it more or less
than it is. You know, we are going to recruit really
hard and we are going to try to recruit great
players. I think that there's enough to sell at NC
State to attract very good players.

Now, whether every year you have
McDonald's All-Americans or not, I don't know.
There's a lot of great players that never played in
the McDonald's All-American game. We are going
to recruit the guys we think fit in here, and if North
Carolina and Duke or Georgetown, doesn't matter,
UConn happen to be recruiting those players, that
doesn't mean we are going to stop recruiting them
and not try.

We are going to continue to
aggressively go after the guys that we would like to
have here.

Wondering if you could talk about
the challenges and the benefits of the rotation
and how that's worked for you.
Well, first of all,
every team is different. We have a couple more
guys I think that could very easily be playing in our
rotation. We just felt like, you know, the seven that
are playing have really got into a good groove.
And you know, some of the advantages
might be that those seven, they are getting into
great basketball shape. There's really a good
rhythm. In other words, guys know when they are
going in and who they are coming in for.

It's pretty
simple. Obviously the disadvantage is if you are in
foul trouble, or if somebody is not playing well, we
have pretty much hung in there with that seven. At
the same time, I'm very confident, if we need to go
deeper into our bench with the guys that we have.
You know, for the last, I think since our
Syracuse game, quite honestly, that's when we
made our decision and that's been pretty good for
us up to this point.

You were able to balance foul
trouble when Richard was getting into foul
issues there; did that make you confident that
you could continue to do that that way?
Yeah, the foul
trouble hurts us, it hurts anybody, but it hurts us
more because we are not playing that many guys.

Jordan Vandenberg was hurt for a lot of the year;
still is, and so we are going to red-shirt him. That
took an interior guy that was in the rotation out;
that became a tough thing to overcome.

So just three post players were all that we
are going with now and they have done a nice job.

Did you see that your old ESPN
colleague, Joe Lunardi, had you as one of the
last in?
As a former member
of the media, one thing I do know, is Joey
Brackets, who I love, his lists will change at least a
hundred times between now and Selection
Sunday.

So all those things are fun, and there's a
lot of chatter about who is in, who is out, and the
way that you get into the tournament is to win
games. You have to earn your way in. And
outside of that being a fun thing to look at, there's
not a lot of -- I understand, there's going to be a lot
of movement in any of those kinds of lists.